Nicole Herz

Architectural elements, especially rooftops, play a personified role in the New York works of painter Nicole Herz. Herz explains, “My paintings depict the smaller skyline of New York City. They are inspired by the rooftops of the 19th century industrial-era factory buildings and smaller-scale residences of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. On the roofs of these older buildings, I find complex relationships among the shapes, hues and textures of water towers, skylights, chimneys, vents and antennas.”

Through simplification, abstraction and the editing of color, composition and form, she isolates the objects and highlights their relationships to each other and to the sky. Herz says, “By reinterpreting the scene, I create a personal mood of place and time that expresses my most intimate reaction to the subjects.” Her work is primarily small in scale—further interpreting her personal connection to the cityscapes she creates.

Herz's interest in the simplification and abstraction of form continues to manifest itself in her paintings of rural Maine. Those paintings explore the worlds she finds both inside and reflected in the windows of abandoned houses and barns. Once inhabited and full of life, these old houses and barns now exist on their own terms, still and sculpture-like. The abstraction of the structures celebrates the fundamental beauty of their form while evoking the lingering presence of past inhabitants.

Her most recent work explores how the colors, textures and forms of these structures relate to the same elements in the landscape that surrounds them.

Nicole Herz is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned her B.F.A. in painting. She has also studied abroad in Rome, Italy. The artist lived in New York City until 2001, and now lives and works on Mount Desert Island, Maine.

Nicole exhibits at the Wingspread Gallery, Northeast Harbor, Maine.

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